Arts, Crafts, and Inspiration

A Story
by Bethany

Once upon a time there was a girl named Bethany. She loved to take pictures. She loved to blog. She loved to take pictures to put on her blog.

One day Bethany's camera battery ran out. Solvable problem. Then she realized that her battery charger had gone missing. Unsolvable problem.

Bethany's blog remained unposted.

Then she decided that she was sick of her old post, no new comments, and SEVERE lack of pictures....so, she pulled out the camera phone in desperation.

And now she can blog...at least today.

The end.


So, what was so exciting that I HAD to take pictures from my phone and post them on my blog? OK, honestly...it's probably not THAT exciting. But I wanted to show everyone Eden's art.

We've been having lots of fun the past while and it seems like there's lots of arts and crafts involved. Eden's been LOVING it.

There was a community activity day (Parents as Teachers) where the kids were able to get a little messy. Eden learned to paint. She LOVED it. They squirted a few colors of paint on a paper and the kids painted using a cue tip. She painted this all by herself (except her name of course). My favorite part about this picture was the blue squiggly line that is to the left of her name....see it? She drew that and said, "snake". (The picture is being held on our fridge by an Elvis magnet in case anyone was curious about the scary man in the corner.)

There was also an area with glue and things to stick to it. I put glue on and she would put things on (she did get to use some glue in the end as well). I wrote her name and Eden started to do really good at the beginning (notice the "E"). Then she just started plopping things on the page everywhere.

The only negative thing about this "messy day" is that Eden isn't much for messes (except when she eats and she knows that I rip off all her clothes for the purpose that its ok to get a bit messy). So, every time she got something on her hands she dropped everything and made me wipe it off before she would continue with her art.

Today at the house we had fun with cardboard. I pulled out the tent that I made for Eden a while back and she played for a while. Then she flattened it and laid down on it. I thought "hmm...that could be fun." So, I grabbed a marker and started to trace around her. She only let me do her legs. But then she would find other things for me to trace or tell me to draw something. Then she wanted to color and draw as well. It was fun.
Notice at the bottom I wrote her full name "Eden Emishi Finlinson". I was trying to teach her to say it. She said "Eden", "Mishi", and "Eden Finsin". Not too bad.

This is her drawing. It was after breakfast so I hadn't dressed her yet.Something I noticed a while back is that in her coloring book she'll scribble over it. But I noticed that she's really trying to color in the pictures the best she can. Notice the little circles I drew? She was trying to color each of them.
Also, I've been inspired. My friend's blog posted some crafts she's been working (blog post here) on that came from the blog makeitandloveit.blogspot.com. I love a lot of ideas that came from the blog and I'm determined to increase my craftiness. You should check it out if you haven't yet (and check on my friend's because I honestly think her little girl's sweater dress turned out WAY cuter than the one on the craft blog). You gotta kind of skim through it...there were a lot of things I was like "eh...I could live without that". But then you'll get to a few that look AWESOME and EASY. That's when I felt inspired to create.